CB Droege is a fantasy author and poet living in Munich. Recently his fiction was collected in RapUnsEl and Other Stories, and a selection of his poetry appeared in the Drawn to Marvel anthology. His first novel, Zeta Disconnect was released in 2013. He recently edited Dangerous to Go Alone! An Anthology of Gamer Poetry.Learn more at manawaker.com

How It Really Went Down

Okay, look. I know you’ve heard a lot, but you weren’t there, so you don’t know how it really went down, okay. You want to know what really happened? Yeah, Elly killed that ship’s captain, but it wasn’t for revenge or anything like that, and it wasn’t “premeditated”. It was all on the up’n’up, and she did it in the course of her duty to her crew. I see you disbelieving me, but it’s the Earth’s honest truth. That video that you keep seeing all over the net, the one that shows Captain Clyde spacing Elly’s little sister? Elly didn’t even see that video until after we’d taken Clyde’s ship, I shit you not. I was there, man. I watched it with her after the poindexters found it on the ship’s computer. I tell you this: She wasn’t even mad. She even laughed a little, which freaked me out a bit. I said to her, “Captain, ain’t that your sister?” Everybody there recognized her. I mean: Just like you, we’d all seen the reports on the net after she went missing. “Sure is!” Elly said without looking at me. Then that idiot Odie said, “At least you know what happened to her now,” and tried to put his hand on her shoulder, like she would need comforting or something. She damn-near broke his wrist. She didn’t say nothing else, though. Just walked out to finish putting claim to the spoils on Clyde’s ship. I don’t think she liked her sister all that much, or she may even have felt like Clyde did the right thing. I saw the whole tape, mind you, not just the forty-five second clip you’ve all seen. It was more than ten minutes long and included a short trial, and a sentencing, and everything. It was a by-the-code thing that Captain Clyde did when he spaced that girl. That’s what the news-nets don’t get. There’s a code out here, and we’ve all got to follow it. I don’t know why Clyde kept the thing to himself after he done it. Maybe he feared Elly’s revenge, just like everybody thinks, but if he did, he should’ve known better. Elly’s the most honorable captain I’ve ever served, and that’s all I have to say on the matter.